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Serving up for one too many

I am a (hopefully temporary) single parent. I need to make food and activities suited to one adult and two kids. What I’ve realised is I’ve got a set of normal divisions I do for food every day – 6 sausages is 1.5 each, or 1 each for the kids and 2 each for the adults. A pack of 4 scones is one each. Four handfuls of rice and add one for the pot.

When I’m clicking through the Tesco order (still on his account because he booked the slots and texted me his passwords before they put him on the ventilator), I have to strip down and remove a ton of the items he had put in, which I now realise only he was really eating. 

Our apple consumption has plummeted – the kids like Granny Smiths and he likes a Braeburn. There’s a pile of Braeburns I’m trying to sneak in to people’s stomachs at any opportunity. Nobody likes the cheese and onion crisps in the variety pack. I need half the eggs, half the milk, and I don’t need any Bombay mix at all. 

The £40 free delivery limit is hard to reach now. We just don’t need as much. It’s another scratchy little reminder that everything is not normal at the moment. 

The non-optional nature of lone parenting seems to help make it more bearable. I’m not desperate to get out for a walk on my own the way I was when it was available to me. The whole thing is *so* unfair, that a small piece of unfairness like that doesn’t really register. You can’t spend the whole time staring into the abyss. 

Other people’s tubs

There’s a pile of tubs and Pyrex dishes in my hall. I’m trying to keep a mental list of what belongs to whom. 

People don’t know what they can do. Most often, those nearby respond by cooking. A friend who’s been through something similar told me early on ‘accept all offers of help and food’, which hasn’t been the worst plan, but it does mean you need to accept what you’re given, even if it’s far healthier than you’d make yourself, or contains ingredients I mostly struggle to get the kids to eat. How galling too, when they wolf something when it’s come from someone else’s kitchen they would never accept from mine. I watched on with barely concealed outrage last night as my youngest chomped through a pile of chicken and wild rice with fresh coriander. Coriander! 

People further away send hampers. We’ve had 5 hampers in 10 days. I’ve redistributed the chutney and wine – I’m not drinking, and we’re not chutney people. I’m sending a child to choose some biscuits to open, and we discuss what we like and dislike about them like entitled gastronomes. We fret about when we’re going to cook our own food. 

Of course I’m grateful and see my luck. Imagine doing this without a big group of friends and family trying to help. Imagine doing this without children to distract you from staring into the void.  So, I try to thank people ‘well’: I try to make it appropriate, not fall into cliches. It’s a small exercise in staying creative. 

Sometimes it feels like nothing helps. But really it all helps. Who am I to question the ‘quality’ or ‘appropriateness’ of the help people are trying to offer? What helps one day might not on another – it’s all so random. They’re not psychic, and even if they could read my mind, they’d find it such a jumble they’d need to sort through it with tongs and possibly a scuba mask. 

I’ve been in their position, and I’ve been absolutely rubbish at finding the right thing to offer. Because really what you wish is to make the bad situation go away. Make the sick relative better, make the depression or the cancer or the grief leave someone’s body. And you can’t do that so you make a lasagne. 

What it tells me is we are loved. That there’s a community around us. And if I can untangle my jumbled head a little, and ask people for things, most of them would sell their car to make it happen. 

Self portrait task

I became a mum at 12:43 on a rainy Thursday in October 2020, and I’ve never felt luckier. 

I found out I was pregnant a month before the first lockdown and was lucky that my manager suggested I start shielding, since the impact of COVID on early pregnancy was unknown. 

I was so lucky that I knew my midwife and she could do a home booking, I remember laughing with her about how surreal it was being on the other side of an appointment, being the one to answer all the questions instead of asking and explaining. 

I was lucky my partner was able to come to an early pregnancy scan a day before the ‘patient only’ rule came into force. Even though our baby was just a tiny bean, we were able to experience that together, as parents should. 

I was lucky that I had the support of my colleagues at appointments when my partner couldn’t attend. I was lucky the weather was so lovely, I spent most of those months gardening or reading in the sunshine. 

I was lucky to have an incredibly empowering water birth, that my baby was completely healthy, and I was home that night.

I’ve been so lucky to be surrounded by family during the second and third lockdowns, to have my mum in my bubble and the mountains on my doorstep.

Like most people becoming parents during COVID, my arrival into motherhood hasn’t been particularly ‘normal’.  I attended most appointments alone, there were months of isolation, no baby shower or showing off my bump, very few people have met my baby and grandparents watch him grow over FaceTime.  But despite knowing how hard life has been for so many with everything going on in the world, I’ve been so lucky.

I’m a single mother to a 4 year old in reception. I have two jobs (though the second is my own business and I’ve not had any work since the end of Feb 2020) and I’m also at uni.

I have no familial support or bubbles.

I feel like any empathy for parents ran out in lockdown 1 and furlough is much less of a thing, or carries heavy subtext that furloughed staff are putting themselves in the redundancy firing line. 

I wake at 6am, do home schooling and try to find time for household chores amongst school and work meetings. Most days they’re timed in such a way that we don’t have time to go outside or cook lunch or dinner – toast and bananas are fuelling us through 2021.

At 8pm once my daughter is asleep my proper work day begins. I work until 3am, and have had to let my studies slide entirely so I can sleep for 3 hours.

I’m not coping and have been suffering hallucinations and migraines from lack of sleep and even in those 3 hours I find myself often stuck with insomnia and lie awake going over doubts about everything: how come I have no one? Why is my child being deprived of all social interactions and a decent crack at education? What will be the long term impact on her? And me?

I’m not able to keep my cool at all with my daughter the next day, and if I’m not shouting I’m wracked with guilt. They seem to be the only states I exist in.

I took this photo on Tuesday 5th January 2021, at around 13:00pm. 

The 5th January was the first day of lockdown number 3 in the uk, and it meant my two children had not gone back to school, and with such a last minute decision from government. Thrown into the deep end. 

It was also my first day back at work after two weeks off over Christmas. I expected it to be a busy day, and I had not been looking forward to returning to work because of that. I really needed to be concentrating on getting back into work mode.

I was happy that my children were at home, but in contrast to the first lockdown, there was now the sudden expectation to support children to homeschool. I attempted to juggle the first morning back at work, and the first morning of homeschooling two primary-age children, with growing feelings of anxiety, frustration, and despair. By lunchtime, everyone was angry and upset.

Nature is a big part of our lives anyway, and we are lucky to live on the edge of a town where we can access country walks within minutes of our home. We went for a lunchtime break, knowing it would make us all feel better. The sun was shining and the sky was blue. 

The effect on all of us was almost instantaneous. This imagine captures me in a moment of serenity; feeling the warmth of the sun, and feeling the comfort of it. I experienced a real sense of perspective, having left the stress of the house and the responsibility of work and homeschooling, to just BE. I vowed in that moment to accept my limitations as a person and a mother, and to not expect to be able to do it all. We have not had a morning like that since.

This is my son and me most mornings since March 2020. I carry him and my work laptop downstairs to start work at 7am.

Been having a play with watercolours as not used to them – hard to not use them like a pen! Not quite got the kid’s face right here.